27 May, 2016 | Comments Off on The ABCs of Visual Advertising (Infographic) | By TWMG

Research has shown that 83 percent of common society members are visual learner.

Having creativity is one thing, but achieving your business goals with your design is another. Sometimes, the most aesthetically pleasing visual ads don’t work because they don’t serve a purpose or have a call-to-action. Here is a comprehensive guide on how to make your visual ads effective.

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30 December, 2015 | Comments Off on December Is Proven As The Fruitful Month For Advertisers | By TWMG

Once again, the month of December has proven to be a great month for advertising spend.

Retailers have again splashed out heavily on Christmas advertising as they attempt to seize their slice of the pie from competitors and online competitors.

The biggest spending segments for the month of December remain alcohol, department stores, grocery stores, hardware and electronics. With many also heavily promoting their pending post-Christmas sales. And it’s hardly a surprise they’re in a fight for your dollar with a forecast by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) predicting every single Australian will spend close to $1100 on Christmas gifts this year.

When it came to alcohol as an example, advertising spend for December was almost six-times that of the money spent in July.

Naturally, the supermarkets/FMCG clients were huge spenders up until Christmas. According to BigDatr Woolies was the biggest spender with 44.8 per cent of the category. Coles was next with 25.11 per cent and ALDI had 12.4 per cent. When it came to hardware, Bunnings had 43 per cent of the category, Barbecues Galore 11 per cent and Home Timber & Hardware 8.5 per cent. For electronics Harvey Norman was the top spender with 30.17 per cent, followed by Dick Smith with 15.29 per cent and The Good Guys with close to 14 per cent.

Meanwhile, BIG W was the biggest spender with well over a third of the category spend. Myer was second with close to 28 per cent and had almost six times the ads of competitor David Jones.

While some are good, there are ugly ones as well. Here are top ten most brilliant Christmas ads you might find useful during preparing your Christmas campaign next year.

1. JOHN LEWIS 2015 – MAN ON THE MOON

John Lewis is notorious for its most moving Christmas ads and this year the department store has held up its title with the Man on the Moon ad. Within two hours of its release the advert got 23,000 online mentions.

The ad features a little girl looking through her telescope at an old man living on the moon. She sees he is lonely and tries to contact him, but all her attempts fail. On Christmas Eve she finally succeeds and the man on the moon receives a telescope in a balloon-floated box, showing him that he is loved and not alone.

This advertisement brought tears to everyone’s eyes with the slogan ‘Show someone they are loved this Christmas’.

2. SAINSBURY’S 2014 – CHRISTMAS IS FOR SHARING

UK supermarket giant Sainsbury’s is another fierce competitor for best Christmas ads. Its 2014 Christmas is for sharing ad warmed everyone’s heart with a moving tale of a Christmas truce between German and British soldiers in World War I. For Christmas Day they forget their differences and play football together.

3. SKY MOVIES 2015 – HIDING THE SPROUTS

Sky Movies’ 2015 ad, Hiding the sprouts, celebrates Sky Movies best films from 2014 to 2015. It features a little girl who hates brussels sprouts, in an attempt to get rid of them she is transported into a world of movies such as Cinderella, Night in the Museum, Big Hero 6, and Marvel superheroes. She cleverly dumps the sprouts without being caught.

4. LIDL 2015 – SCHOOL OF CHRISTMAS

German supermarket store Lidl’s 2015 School of Christmas ad shows a community joining together to attend Lidl’s Christmas School, where they learn how to correct common mistakes over the holiday season. Some of the tips include: untangling Christmas lights, cooking the turkey just right, perfecting their “I’m so surprised and thankful for this present” face and making the best leftover sandwich.

5. JOHN LEWIS 2014 – MONTY THE PENGUIN

Another amazing John Lewis ad was the 2014 Monty the Penguin ad. This ad shows the unbreakable friendship between a boy and his penguin, Monty. This sentimental and heartfelt tale shows their adventures together. However Monty is lonely and longs for his own kind, so to cheer him up on Christmas Day the boy gives his best friend another penguin to be friends with.

6. BURBERRY 2015

Burberrys latest campaign pays homage to the 15th anniversary of Billy Elliot by using the opening scene from the movie. The ad features the face of Burberry Romeo Beckham and various other celebrities including Naomi Campbell, George Ezra, Elton John and Rosie Huntington-Whitley, jumping up against a Christmas themed background in Burberrys latest collection.

Warehouse Fashions pays tribute to the Christmas song Twelve Days of Christmas with this hungover office party-Twelve Hours of the Morning After.

8. KELLOGG’S CORNFLAKES 1990 – WAITING FOR SANTA

This Kellogg’s Cornflakes ad is a classic ad from the 90s. It shows three little girls trying to wait up to see Santa on Christmas Eve. The youngest gets woken in the night and sees Santa who prefers Cornflakes to the traditional cookies and milk.

9. PAYPAL 2015 – NO PRESENTS

In this sweet Christmas ad, two brothers fear their parents haven’t got them any presents, as they haven’t been out shopping. However they have no reason to fear because their parents bought everything online with PayPal!

10. HARVEY NICHOLS 2015 – GIFT FACE

This Harvey Nichols ad warns everyone of ‘gift face’, the face you pull when you receive a bad present. The ad features a girl receiving a number of bad presents and pretending she likes them. Harvey Nichols says you can avoid ‘gift face’ by shopping for quality presents at its stores.

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25 November, 2015 | Comments Off on The Native Advertising Principles: A Definitive Advertising Guide For Brands And Publishers | By TWMG

Two major advertising organisations – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) of Australia and The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) – have collaborated to create a definitive guidelines around native advertising for both advertisers and publishers.

The “Native Advertising Principles” is created with the aim to provide protection tools for advertisers to reference, aimed at ensuring readers can easily distinguish between what is paid-for advertising versus editorial content in the online environment.

Matt Tapper, managing director global markets, Lion Beer, Cider and Wine and new chair of the AANA board, said with the increasing potential for blurred lines between editorial and paid-for advertising, it’s timely that these principles are being launched to provide guidance to advertisers and publishers about how they should guarantee transparency for consumers.

The IAB and AANA define native advertising as: “Paid for content that is assimilated to appear like surrounding editorial content in the online environment,” with the principles for doing native well mainly focusing on ensuring there are visible cues for consumers to devise the content was paid for. These cues could be the use of the brand’s logo in or around the content or the use of a different design, font or shading to clearly differentiate it from the editorial content.

Alice Manners, CEO of IAB Australia, said: “The rise of native advertising and storytelling by brands is fundamentally shifting the way in which we, as an industry, need to consider advertising. The Native Advertising Principles are an important addition to the IAB Australia’s Advertising Playbook and the AANA’s Code of Ethics and we expect they will provide valuable guidance to advertisers and publishers alike.

Ed Harrison, IAB chairman and CEO of Yahoo7 agreed and said native advertising is a strategically important format for the industry, particularly in the drive towards monetising mobile. Its ability to provide a seamless consumer experience is exceptional, but its successfulness will ultimately be defined by ensuring the advertisements are clearly delineated and defined for consumers

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17 November, 2015 | Comments Off on Four Reasons Why You Need To Consider Social Media Advertising | By TWMG

Social media advertising is one of the most popular and effective way to promote your business in today’s digital age.

When newspaper, magazine and TV are not enough, social media might be the right solution for your marketing needs. Still not convinced? In today’s post, we will exemplify four reasons why you need to shift your attention toward social media advertising right away.

1. It’s Cheaper

This is the most obvious reason. Businesses that invest their money in social media marketing rather than television find there’s a much higher ROI. The average time cost of a 30-second television commercial costs $342,000. Most small businesses don’t have that kind of money to spend on a single approach, and unless a commercial airs during primetime or during a popular program, not very many people will see it.

2. It’s Easier to Target Your Audience

This is definitely one of the positive aspect of social media advertising is the ability to easily target your audience. The main reason TV commercials don’t work is because they’re unspecific. TV commercials just hit everyone across the board. Because of that, businesses aren’t able to target directly to their customers, and conversions are low.

Social media involves a number of tools that make targeting a customer simple. Using analytics and data collections, businesses can display ads to consumers based on their interests, browsing and shopping behaviors, email addresses, and similar audiences. It’s currently the most efficient form of target advertising.

3. Mobile Is Becoming More Popular

Nowadays, the average consumer spends more time on their phone than they do in front of the television. Aside from texts and phone calls, most of the time spent hunched over the tiny screen is used to browse social media. Eighty percent of customers own a smartphone, and in 2014, we reached the point where more people used their phones to browse the internet than any other medium. There’s not much room for television when consumers are spending all their time looking at their phones.

4. Tracking Conversions Is Easy

Finally, data tracking has been made easier thanks to social media, meaning that you can find a measurable number of consumers influenced by your social ads when making a purchase. The ability to easily track performance of these ads means that companies can repeat successful strategies and tweak the ones that don’t work. Conversions that come with commercials aren’t so easy to measure. Your marketing department becomes smarter about their ad spending and overall strategies so that they can put their time, money, and effort into improving other marketing areas.

Like in all things business related, there comes a point when you must recognize which marketing strategies aren’t working and move on. If you’re currently putting excessive money and energy into television marketing, now is the time to make a change, and put your money where the ROI is high.

MDG Advertising’s latest infographic reveals 4 trends making a big impact on advertising budgets in 2016. Some of the trends include: the rise of digital ad spending, Facebook and mobile’s growth in advertising.

Have you spent countless hours to devise your advertising budget for 2016? The best strategy should match with the top trends of modern marketing and compatible with media channels that suits your budget. If your ad budget is in your hands but you need a hand with proper planning, this post is appropriate for you.

For more detailed tips and tricks, take a look at the following infographic.

MercerBell, a Sydney based customer experience agency, created the latest commercial. It deals with the campaign’s popular ‘Ahhh’ theme by showing people amidst depressing situations and calling the insurer for help.

Dominic Brandon, Allianz group manager marketing and brand, stated that this next phase allowed them to move beyond traditional channels of TV and radio where the audio link with the brand name has worked so well, thus brought ‘Ahhh’ moments to life in other media channels.

Furthermore, Allianz will see their sponsorship with Foxtel during the football season. They are planning to air ‘Ahhh’ moments of the round. The insurance company also stated that they will also include sponsored radio segments that invite listeners to tell their own stories when accidents happened.

Here is the official ad:

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The term “native advertising” is getting big in the online advertising community, yet its definition has been confusing until now. In short, native advertising is not an advertorial. Instead, it contributes value to any page it presents by improving user experience and adding value for consumers. Recent data confirms that publishers, agencies, marketers, and investors believe that native advertising is the fastest growing segment in the online advertising business. One of the best example of how native video advertising works is by looking on how an advertising company like Vooza creating native advertising videos for their clients. Take a closer look at how native advertising works in context on this infographic:

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For many years, I have remained a presence in the shadows. You citizens of the internet have gone about your lives, navigating to this page and that, reading articles, watching videos, exchanging messages with friends, but all the while a single question has clawed at your curiosity each time your focus breaks and you notice the garish blinking ads strewn about your web pages:

Who, who is it that clicks these banner ads?

The time to wonder has ended and the time has come to open your eyes and to see the truth, to discover who has been clicking that which you so often ignore.

It is I who click the banner ads.

While you check the weather, I find out why dermatologists hate the one weird skin care secret discovered by a stay-at-home mum. While you read the New York Times, I rollover for more information about how to get my diabetes under control. While you search IMDB, I click for showtimes, tickets and behind-the-scenes videos for Think Like a Man. Page after page, banner after banner, I click and I click.

It is not for myself that I click these banner ads, not because I yearn for exclusive local deals and belly fat-reducing tips. No, it is for all of you that I click to learn more, rollover to expand and tap to download. Without me, your banners would go unclicked. And if your banners go unclicked, then who will pay for your web pages? Banners are the steam engine of the internet and I must shovel coal into the fiery maw.

It may be a sacrifice, to labour hour after hour, day after day, month after month in my secret lair, one hand on a mouse, the other on an iPad, furiously clicking and tapping every banner ad I can find. My ears have been calloused by movie trailers with auto-playing sound. My eyes have been warped and reddened by live streams of red carpet events presented by auto manufacturers. My hands have turned to gnarled claws from all the cartoon monkeys I have punched. My computer is but a shuddering pile of tracking cookies and spyware following my every move so that the next “lower my bills” advertisement I see is slightly better targeted to my gender, age and browsing history.

Some may see me as a tragic husk, obsessed with duty but without friendship, without warmth, and without love for anything but all of you who I labour so hard to keep safe. I may have hundreds of free ringtones, thousands of exclusive promotional desktop wallpapers, and millions of special offer codes, but what good is a printable coupon for one dollar off a family-sized chicken lasagna when you have no family?

But a hero is more than himself. I am the thin gossamer line between a free, sprawling internet and an oppressive desert bound in barbed wire and ruled by dollar-hungry warlords. Without me clicking to learn how New York drivers are saving hundreds on car insurance, you would be paying for what you are reading right now, throwing precious coin down an endless digital well.

So if you see a targeted text advertisement for debt reduction next to your email, know that I am there. If you see an animated custom background for the Call of Duty franchise, know that I am there. If you see a three-dimensional computer-animated dog run across the page and cover the video you are watching about dog food, know that I am there.Now get back to your reading, your posting, your downloading. The night will soon be over and there are still hundreds more credit card offers I must post to my wall.

Mike Lacher writes and programs funny things on the internet. His book On The Bro’d, a full translation of On The Road into bro-speak, is currently available wherever books are sold.

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